News articles, commentaries, reviews, translations on subjects of potential interest to progressive minded individuals and organizations, with a special emphasis on the Quebec national question, indigenous peoples, Latin American solidarity, and the socialist movement and its history.

Friday, December 30, 2016

Aided by the bombs of the Russian air force and the bullets of foreign militias organized by Iran, Syria’s president Bashar Al-Assad has finally managed to destroy the eastern sector of the country’s largest city Aleppo, the major remaining pocket of popular resistance to his regime.

In the following article Santiago Alba Rico, a Spanish-born philosopher and writer based in Tunisia, analyzes what the defeat in Syria means for democratic and progressive opinion everywhere, and in particular the far-reaching implications of the failure of much of the international left to identify with and mobilize in support of the people of Syria in their powerful rebellion against oppression and repression. This failure, he argues, was a critical factor that facilitated the efforts of Assad and his reactionary international allies to drown the revolt in a river of blood.

Alba Rico’s harsh assessment of “the left” in this article may seem caricatural to some readers; not everyone on the left is an apologist for Assad or Putin. However, the indifference of many, or their unwillingness to confront the important issues posed by the war, which I think are accurately described by Alba Rico, has given free rein to those who choose to see the conflict in Syria as little more than a rerun of a Cold War scenario of imperialism versus a Third World government.

Santiago Alba Rico is well-known in the European left for his perceptive analyses of the popular rebellions in the Middle East and North Africa during the last six years collectively identified as the “Arab Spring.”

His article was first published in the Spanish online newspaper Público and has since been widely reproduced elsewhere. My translation from the Spanish. And a special thanks to Art Young, a long-time comrade in Toronto who is active in Palestine solidarity, for his helpful collaboration with me in working through these issues ourselves.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Aleppo, the tomb of the left

by Santiago Alba Rico

To kill on a large scale, as we know, it is necessary to lie as well as to insult and deprecate the victims. That is what the United States did in Iraq and what Israel has always done in Palestine. In 2003 the entire left shared this accusation along with ordinary decent people, and together with them the left vented its anger, and expressed its sympathy, after the bombing of Baghdad or Gaza. But it seems that whatever shocks and enrages us when it is the USA or Israel that are the tormentors has become routine in the mindset of the left when it comes to Syria. We have accepted large-scale lying that allows the Assad regime and its occupying allies — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — to carry out large-scale slaughter, and in doing so not only have we abandoned and deprecated the victims but we have also separated ourselves from ordinary decent people. A major part of the global left has effectively placed itself on the margin of ethics, alongside the dictators and the many imperialisms that are vanquishing the region. In a Europe where neofascism — and Islamist terrorism — are increasing rapidly, this new error, along with so many others, can cost us very dearly.

Much lying had to be done to make it possible for Assad to kill on a large scale. It meant denying that the Syrian regime was a dictatorship and even stating that it is anti-imperialist, socialist and humanist. It meant denying that there had been a very transversal, non-sectarian democratic revolution in which millions of Syrians — many of them on the left, not affiliated with any leadership or party — were participating; a sort of giant 15M[1] crystallized in Councils and Local Coordinating Committees. It meant denying the brutal repression of the demonstrations, the arrests, the torture, the disappearances. It meant denying the legitimacy of the Free Syrian Army. It meant denying the bombing with barrels of dynamite and the use of chemical weapons by the regime. It meant denying or justifying the massive bombing by Putin’s Russia. It meant denying the tolerance of all of them — Assad, Russia, Iran, USA, Saudi Arabia, Turkey — toward the growth of ISIS. It meant denying the Iranian occupation of Syria. It meant denying the existence of Russian imperialism and that country’s excellent relations with Israel. It meant denying the erratic indifference of the United States, which intervened only to simultaneously give a free hand to Syria and Saudi Arabia. It meant denying the arms embargo that left the rebellion in the hands of the more radical sectors, as counter-revolutionary as the regime itself. It meant denying the existence of simultaneous demonstrations against Assad and against ISIS or other jihadist militias in towns and cities that had been besieged and destroyed. It meant denying the absence of ISIS in Aleppo, from which it had been expelled by the FSA in 2014. It meant denying the suffering and terror of the people of Aleppo who ­were under siege. But worse, it meant denying the heroism, the sacrifice, the determination to fight of thousands of young Syrians who are like us and want what we do. And worst of all, it meant deprecating them, slandering them, insulting them, making them terrorists, mercenaries or enemies of “freedom.”

Never has the left, faced with a people’s revolution, behaved so ignobly. Not only has it failed to solidarize with that revolution or, once it was defeated, honour its heroes and lament the outcome, but instead it has spat in its face and celebrated its death and its defeat. Consistent with this typically imperialist (or Stalinist) denialism, it has taken its place alongside the European far right. Furthermore, it has repressed the mobilizations in our cities. And to cap it all it has criminalized the sensible left which, along with ordinary decent people has denounced the crimes of Assad and his allies while similarly denouncing the crimes of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States or — to be sure — the intolerable fascism, fully equivalent to that of the regime, of ISIS or the Al-Nusra Front.

As the communist Yassin Al Haj Saleh, for 16 years a prisoner in the regime’s dungeons and one of the greatest living intellectuals, says, Syria reveals the state of the old left and registers its death. When a global democratic revolution exploded six years ago, with the “Arab world” as its epicenter, the left was not prepared either to champion it or to make the most of it, let alone understand it. Today, when the victorious counter-revolutions extend the resuscitated “Arab dictatorships” to the USA and Europe, the left has remained irrelevant as resistance and alternative. Troubled or discomfited, all of the actors have abandoned or fought against the Syrian democratic forces and all — governments, fascist organizations and communist parties — have ended up coinciding in the narrative of the “lesser evil” that condemns Syria to eternal dictatorship, the region to sectarian violence, and Europe to endless terrorism.

This theory of the “lesser evil” (a lesser evil to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, who have been bombed, tortured, or disappeared!) has been the historical template of that regional “stability,” oppressive and deadly for the peoples, that during the second half of the 20th century justified the West’s support to all the dictatorships in the area. After an abortive revolution, this model of the previous century now returns with redoubled ferocity, coupled with and lubricated by a sector of the left that applauds and cheers Bashar Al Assad’s “great victory”; a model that pertains so much to the last century that it can be said that some are celebrating this “great victory” as if, 25 years later and thanks to Putin, the USSR had finally won the Cold War. One thing is certain: what has also been lost this time, in Syria and Europe, and in Russia and Latin America, are democracy and justice, the only possible solutions to the authoritarianisms, imperialisms and fascisms — whether jihadist or half-European — triplet siblings that are gaining territory without resistance, that identify with each other and, accordingly, can only be defeated if they are fought simultaneously.

How are we to define these “Arab revolutions” that are now definitively dying in Aleppo with the complicity of jihadism and the complacency of the broad international alliance of right and left thrown against Syria? These revolutions were above all a revolt against the yoke of the geopolitics that had frozen, as if in amber, the inequalities and resistances in the area for at least 70 years. In a world of unequal power relationships between nation-states, geopolitics always limits any emancipatory politics of the left. That is to say, geopolitics is not of the left. If we have to take it into account in order to make minimal progress in a realistic way against the imperialist powers and in favour of sovereignty, we cannot go so far as to contradict the elemental principles associated with the universal character of any ethic of liberation: that which was once called “internationalism,” the instinct that must be recovered in a non-identitarian and democratic version.

The so-called “Arab world” (which is also Kurd, Imazighen, Berber, Toubou, etc.) is the most painful example of an entire region that is a hostage of its own oil wealth, sacrificed to the common interest of competing powers and subpowers — so-called “stability.” When the peoples of the area rebelled in 2011 in opposition to this monstrous “equilibrium,” without seeking permission from anyone, and on the margin of all inter-national interests, geopolitics ensnared them, as in a straitjacket, and the left, alongside their enemies, hastened to tie the sleeves and tighten the steel buttons.

In a context in which US hegemony is weakening, in which other powers, imperialist as well, are freeing themselves from its hegemony in order to impose their own agendas, and in which the campism of the second half of the 20th century is replaced by a hornet’s nest of counterposed reactionary interests very similar to that of the First World War — and because this time there is not a single anticapitalist or emancipatory force or project — the left, understanding nothing about the “new world disorder” or its reactionary configuration, has hastened to deliver the Syrian people, bound hand and foot, to a murderous dictator, Putin’s Russia, the ayatollahs’ Iran, and along the way the Islamic State and the Sunni theocracies of the Gulf. In other words, to what Pablo Bustinduy[2] has called “the geopolitics of disaster.” Now it is not done in the name of the “lesser evil” (Franco and Pinochet a lesser evil?). Troubled and overwhelmed by these popular intifadas that it did not understand (save for a handful of “Trotskyists” who were “Trotskyists” only because they did understand and support them), the global left reacted from the beginning in the same way as the governments and the far right, supporting the dictators. For the imperialists this has never posed any problem (“our sons of bitches”[3]) but it should have meant something to people who claim to be “on the left” but who have ended up renouncing any attempt to understand the world in tune with its ethical and political principles. Abandoning our own people on the ground, they supported the executioners and allowed them to kill on a large scale. To do this, as we said, they had to take leave of the truth and submit to the same culturalist, racist and Islamophobic clichés of the worst European rightists.

Relying on an outdated geopolitical way of thinking that blocks any grappling with the “new world disorder,” the left has effectively abandoned its ethical principles in exchange for nothing; or, more precisely, in order to promote the return in an expanded and worsened version of the dictatorships, imperialisms and jihadisms. This great geostrategic success has been achieved at the cost of accepting a three-fold contradiction that is incompatible with the universality of the ethic of liberation and is brutally Western and Orientalist.

To accept this geostrategic yoke — otherwise illusory and unfounded — presupposes, firstly, declaring shamelessly that inhabitants of Madrid are entitled to fight an insufficiently democratic monarchy and a corrupt bipartisan system and to desire, without risking their lives, more democracy and more social justice for their country, while Syrians must on the other hand support a dictatorship that jails, tortures and assassinates them and renounce any glimmer of democracy and social justice.

To accept this false geostrategic yoke presupposes, secondly, saying as well that the imprisonment of Andrés Bódalo[4] in Spain is much more serious than that of Yassin Al Haj Saleh or Salama Keile or Samira Khalil, all of them communists, in Syria; or that the arrest of some puppeteers or the prosecution of a city councillor in Madrid is much more serious than the siege through hunger and bombing of an entire country.

To accept this false geostrategic yoke presupposes, finally, claiming in a perfectly ordinary way the right of Spanish (or Latin American) people to decide whether and when and how the “Arabs” can rebel against their dictators. The Syrians, it seems, must do what they are told from afar by a left that has exposed itself as impotent, useless and blind in its own countries. It also means experiencing as a threat, not as a hope, the democratic will and social struggles of other peoples: those fighting in more difficult conditions for the same things as we do become not comrades but enemies, not valiant partners with whom we must express our solidarity but “terrorist” criminals, the term that we have rightly denounced or downplayed when it is used by our judges or our “imperialist” governments.

In short, a large part of the Arab, European and Latin American left has sacrificed internationalism to a geostrategic order in which the peoples and their democratic struggles no longer have any friends and in which this left, irrelevant and in retreat now throughout the world, has let the regimes against which the “Arabs” rose up in 2011 advance without resistance. We have understood nothing, we have done nothing to help, we have handed over to the enemy all our weapons, including conscience. After Syria democracy is retreating everywhere. Aleppo is indeed the tomb of the Syrians’ dreams of freedom, but it is also the tomb of the global left. Just when we need it most.

[1] The anti-austerity movement in Spain began with massive demonstrations and occupations on May 15, 2011, now known colloquially as 15M, inspired in part by the social uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt at that time.

[2] Pablo Bustinduy is a Podemos member of Madrid’s City Council and works with the party’s delegation in the European Parliament.

[3] Franklin Roosevelt is reported to have referred to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza as “a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

[4] Andrés Bódalo is a well-known trade unionist and former Podemos candidate in Jaén, Andalusia, who was convicted of an “offence to authority” and sentenced to three years and six months imprisonment for allegedly assaulting a Social Democratic City Council member who had pushed his way through a mass workers’ demonstration outside the City Hall. Many observers say Bódalo was actually attempting to maintain order among the demonstrators.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Of all the tributes to Fidel Castro and assessments of the Cuban leader’s contribution to the world socialist movement, this one by Argentine political economist Claudio Katz seems to me particularly outstanding. It was published first on his web site. My translation and notes.

– Richard Fidler

Our Fidel

by Claudio Katz

With Fidel’s death Latin America’s principal revolutionary figure of the last century has left us. Amidst our great sorrow at his passing it is difficult to assess his stature. But while emotion clouds any evaluation, the Comandante’s influence[1] can be appreciated with greater clarity now that he has left.

The media simply emphasize that importance in a descriptive sense. They describe how he was present in the major events of the last 50 years. And his worst enemies in the empire confirm that overwhelming historical influence. They celebrate his death in order to forget that he lasted in office throughout the mandates of ten U.S. presidents and survived countless assassination attempts by the CIA.

Cuba is the obsession of the Pentagon and the frustration of the State Department. No other country of that size has inflicted so many defeats on the empire. After 53 years David forced Goliath to re-establish diplomatic relations.[2]

Fidel arouses admiration that borders on devotion. The praises stem from his capacity to make possible what was highly improbable. But this fascination is frequently divorced from the content of his achievement.

Many idolize Fidel but from the standpoint of capitalism. They extol the Caribbean leader while promoting variants of the system of exploitation that the Comandante fought throughout his life. In reality, they praise the creator of alien universes while rejecting any such journey by themselves.

For the Left, Fidel always had another meaning. He was the principal designer of a revolutionary socialist project of Latin American emancipation. He put into practice the objective inaugurated by Lenin in 1917 and therefore occupied in Latin America a place equivalent to that of the promotor of the soviets.

But unlike his precursor, Fidel led for decades the process he initiated in 1960. He can be assessed as much for his triumph as for his management.

From a longer-lasting perspective, Castro’s achievement is comparable with the campaigns undertaken by Bolívar and San Martín. He led regional actions attempting to link a second independence for Latin America with the international advance of socialism.

Fidel tackled these tasks of Cyclopean proportions while maintaining a very close relationship with his followers. He addressed his messages to millions of sympathizers who cheered him on various continents. He achieved a rational and passionate connection with the multitudes who heard him speak in countless meetings.

The man and the epic

The Cuban leader always acted with audacity. He radicalized his project under the pressure of the empire and adopted a socialist assignment that smashed all the dogmas of the epoch. He demonstrated that it was possible to initiate an anticapitalist process 90 miles from Miami, and with the OLAS[3] he restored the objective of the region’s anti-imperialist unity.

These three facets — the revolutionary, the socialist and the Latin American emancipator — Fidel shared with Che. The same meeting of minds that brought them together in the landing of the Granma[4] was verified in the strategy of armed actions against the dictatorships and reactionary governments. They maintained political agreements that disprove everything written about the animosity between Castro and Guevara.

The Comandante restored socialist internationalism after decades of mere statements (or clear betrayals) by the Kremlin bureaucracy. He extended this to Africa with the sending of fighters who played a central role in the defeat of apartheid.

These actions replaced the old connection of slavery between Africa and Latin America with a new relationship of solidarity against the common enemies. This attitude elicited enormous affection for Cuba in the Afro-American communities, corroborated in the impressive visits Fidel made to Harlem and his encounters with Mohammed Ali, Malcolm X or Harry Belafonte.

But Fidel’s historic stature emerged with greater clarity after the implosion of the USSR. He achieved anew what appeared impossible by sustaining Cuba’s survival amidst unprecedented adversity. He led in the harshest sacrifices of the special period and sustained a collective resistance forged after three decades of revolution.

That battle of convictions was probably more extraordinary than many military actions. Fidel achieved what very few leaders have achieved in similar circumstances.

That victory served as an example for the radical processes that sprouted in the new millennium. When neoliberalism touched off popular rebellions in South America, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales had a political reference that was absent in other parts of the world. Fidel maintained the socialist ideal as a compass, to be recreated on other foundations.

In Latin America’s new stage, the Comandante encouraged campaigns against the external debt and Free Trade treaties, and with ALBA[5] promoted agencies adapted to the post-dictatorship context in Latin America.

In this context the longing for the “new man” reappeared in the missions of the Cuban doctors. These healthcare contingents demonstrated how the life of the defenseless cast aside by capitalism could be protected.

Fidel combined his aptitude as a speaker (e.g. the “history will absolve me” type of discourse) with military genius (the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola) and geopolitical intelligence (for acting in the international order).

He developed this remarkable profile while maintaining an extremely modest life style. His private life is almost unknown because of the strict separation he established between his privacy and his public exposure.

Over several decades he was involved in all the details of Cuban reality. His tireless activity was popularized with a saying that alluded to this ubiquity (y en eso llegó Fidel – “and therein came Fidel”).

He probably decided to organize his own retirement in order to counteract that overwhelming effect. Beginning in 2006 he placed himself in the background and concentrated his entire activity on the battle of ideas. He deployed a prolific critical analysis of environmental depredation and the poverty generated by capitalism.

Castro’s surprising trajectory confirms many conclusions of Marxist theoreticians on the role of the individual in history. A society’s direction is never dictated by the exceptional conduct of the great leaders. That evolution is mainly determined by the objective conditions prevailing in each epoch.

But in the decisive events that define that course, certain individuals play an irreplaceable role. Fidel confirmed that principle.

It is important to remember that protagonism when confronted with the naive myth that attributes the achievements of the Cuban process to the “pressure of the masses.” This formula assumes that the extraordinary direction taken by the country was due to radical demands from below that the leaders had to support.

In fact it was the opposite that occurred. A consistent leadership convinced the majority through the exemplary nature of their conduct. Fidel led the leaders who were in charge of this epic achievement.

Unresolved dilemmas

Cuba has carried out not the revolution it wanted but the one it could make. There is therefore still a significant distance between ambition and attainment. The major cause of this disparity is glaringly obvious: no titan can fully build socialism in a small plot of land under the relentless harassment of the planet’s major power. The surprising thing is the degree to which Cuba was able to advance albeit faced by such a rival.

This small country has won enormous triumphs that reinforced national self-esteem and the authority of the Comandante. From the Bay of Pigs to the return of the child Elián and the liberation of the five captives in the United States, Cuba won major victories under Fidel’s leadership.

But none of those milestones managed to remove the blockade, to close Guantánamo, or to neutralize the terrorist groups trained by the CIA. Faced with the economic harassment, the family blackmail, the temptation of U.S. citizenship or the mirage of opulent consumerism conveyed by Miami, the tenacity of the Cubans seems miraculous.

This heroism has coexisted with the particular problems the revolution has confronted for a long time now. These difficulties must be assessed in comparison with what has been achieved, bearing in mind the objective limitations affecting the island.

The economy is a central area among those problems. Cuba has shown how a non-capitalist way of thinking can help to avoid hunger, generalized delinquency and school abandonment. In a country with resources closer to Haiti’s than Argentina’s advances have been achieved in infant nutrition, mortality rates or healthcare that surprise everyone.

But the mistaken imitation of the Russian model of complete nationalization produced ineffective results that severely hampered agro-industrial productivity. This mistaken course reflected the difficulty in reconciling continental revolutionary strategies with market-oriented policies. The idealism required by the first objective collided with the egoism of commercial life.

After the special period the country has survived with tourism, agreements with foreign companies and a dual currency market that has segmented the population between those who receive remittances and those who don’t. The society has changed with this emerging social stratification and the subsequent expansion of market activity in order to save foreign exchange and revive agriculture.

Fidel was personally the motive force behind this difficult turn, well aware of the suicide that a return to the shortages of the nineties would entail. Many analysts thought that a return to capitalism had begun, forgetting that the capitalist system presupposes private ownership of the major companies and banks. The reforms have so far opened up more favourable opportunities for the cooperatives, small property and undertakings without allowing the formation of a new ruling class.

The present model seeks to recover high growth rates while simultaneously limiting social inequality. It therefore preserves the economic pre-eminence of the state sector combined with public health and education systems.

Although the changes are proceeding slowly within a context of increasing relief, the three long-term alternatives — capitalist restoration, the Chinese model, or socialist renewal — remain open.

The primacy of one of those models will no longer be the work of Fidel, who rejected the first option, was assessing the second, and favoured the third. His legacy is to continue the egalitarian project within the narrow margins that currently exist in which to implement it.

It is not easy to disentangle this course when the weight of the market, foreign investment, tourism and remittances is increasing. But the suppression of those supports of the economy would lead to the end of the revolution through simple asphyxiation. The balance sought by the reforms is an indispensable foundation for any future transformation.

Significant challenges

The bourgeois establishment has always contrasted the “dictatorship” of the island with the marvels of western democracy. The presidents of the U.S. plutocracy, with great hypocrisy, typically object to the island’s single party system as if the commonality shared by Republicans and Democrats allowed more diversity.

In addition, they avoid mentioning how the electoral colleges violate majority suffrage, and the low level of electoral participation in their country compared with the high participation of the Cubans.

Even greater duplicity is exhibited by the rightists in Latin America. While endorsing the institutional coups d’états in Honduras, Paraguay or Brazil, they wax indignant over the absence of republican formalities in Cuba.

The critics on the left point in a different direction. They question the restrictions on individual freedoms that have given rise to numerous injustices in Cuba.

But if we assess the five decades that have gone by, what is notable is the almost bloodless nature of all the radical transformations effected. It is enough to compare the small number of human losses with the record in other revolutionary processes. The high level of political participation explains this achievement.

Cuba has never suffered the tragedy of the Gulags and therefore avoided the collapse experienced by the USSR. Its political model is very controversial, but to this point no theoretician of direct, soviet or participative democracy has indicated how to govern under the empire’s harassment without resorting to defensive measures that restrict citizens’ rights. The revolution itself has tried different mechanisms to correct the errors that this situation generates.

Many analysts think the bureaucracy is the main cause of the country’s misfortunes, or the great beneficiary of the malformations in the political regime. There is no doubt about its responsibility in many mishaps. But since this stratum will exist as long as the state endures, not much is to be gained from blaming it for all the ills.

To be sure, the bureaucracy greatly increases the inequality and inefficiency. Egalitarianism helps to counteract the first but does not correct the second. A growing democratization provides a counterweight to these misfortunes but produces no miracles. In those intricate fields of state functioning Fidel’s calls to assume responsibility were always more useful than waiting for magic laboratory recipes.

Foreign policy is another focus for harsh questioning of Castroism. The mass media presented Fidel as a mere pawn of the Soviet Union, not recognizing the difference that separates a revolutionary from any servile ruler. They did not imagine any conduct for Cuba other than that practiced by the puppets of the empire.

Some left critics did not understand Fidel’s strategy either. The Cuban leader based himself on alliances with the USSR in order to drive forward a global revolutionary process that his partner rejected.

The tension between the two parties was confirmed on countless occasions: the October missile crisis, the Vietnam war, the uprisings in Africa or Latin America. There were concessions and sometimes errors by the Comandante, such as his approval of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. That occupation buried the socialist renewal that the Prague Spring had promised.

But throughout the period of greatest revolutionary ferment in Latin America, Fidel opted for a balance between diplomatic compromises and continued support of the rebel movements. He sought to overcome Cuba’s isolation, maintaining support for the struggles of the oppressed. Castro had to combine the new exigencies of foreign policy with his ideals as a revolutionary.

The right continued to criticize him for his support to popular uprisings, and some currents on the left objected to his indulgent attitude toward governments of the ruling classes.

Much of Fidel’s advice was certainly problematic, but responsibility for the decisions remained in the hands of those who received these suggestions. The Comandante always conveyed the validity of the decision as he saw it in the processes of each country and his approach was marked by defiance of the authorities of the left of his time.

Nor should we forget how Castro dismissed the recommendations of the Communist party[6] in the Sierra Maestra and the opinions of the Kremlin in regard to the Latin American insurgency. The Cuban leader taught us through his own practice how a revolutionary acts.

The best tribute

Fidel has died in a very difficult year. Figures as detestable as Macri, Temer[7] or Trump have come to government. Their ideologists are back to proclaiming the end of the egalitarian projects, forgetting how many times they have pronounced this same sentence. Fidel would have said that we must accordingly understand what is happening in order to overcome despondency.

Many editorial writers state that Castro did not understand the present period of consumption, individualism and pragmatism. But in any case he grasped the crisis of capitalism that determines such conduct. That central fact is invisible to Fidel’s challengers.

His most vulgar enemies in Miami celebrated his passing with music, confirming the worthless value they assign to human life. But the festivities were meagre consolation for conspirators who have failed to build the least base of support within the island.

Since Fidel retired a decade ago, the repeated speculation over Cuba’s future has drawn less attention. However, it is of great interest to find out what Trump will do. We do not know yet whether the brutal statements he made about Castro’s death are part of his uncontrolled verbal diarrhea or are a foretaste of greater aggression.

Whatever the case, Latin America must prepare to resist a president-elect who has promised to expel millions of undocumented residents. A new anti-imperialist battle is approaching, and it requires fighting against scepticism and resignation.

Some people say that Fidel embodied the ideals of an older segment of the population removed from the expectations of the youth. They do not take into account how capitalism is striking at the new generation, pushing it to recreate the resistance. The development of that action will tend to update the socialist project of Latin American emancipation.

Fidel struggled for the revolutionary transformations that this society needs. It is now up to us to continue his work.

December 2, 2016

Claudio Katz is a researcher with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, and a member of the Left Economists (EDI).

[1] Fidel Castro is often referred to as Comandante, or Commander, in the Latin American left, in reference to his informal title as “Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution,” a legacy of the guerrilla struggle of the 1950s.

This caricature is problematic – not only because it ignores the devastating economic impact of the United States embargo over 55 years, but also because it is premised on neoclassical economic assumptions. This means that by stressing economic policy over economic restraints, critics can shift responsibility for Cuba’s alleged poverty on to Castro without implicating successive US administrations that have imposed the suffocating embargo.

This approach also ignores key questions about Cuba after the revolution. Where can medium and low-income countries get the capital to invest in infrastructure and welfare provision? How can foreign capital be obtained under conditions which do not obstruct such development, and how can a late-developing country such as Cuba use international trade to produce a surplus in a global economy which – many claim – tends to “unequal terms of trade”?

It was the search for solutions to the challenge of development that led Cuba’s revolutionary government to adopt a socialist system. They adopted a centrally planned economy in which state ownership predominated because they perceived this system as offering the best answer to those historical challenges.

But the commitment to operate within a socialist framework implied additional restraints and complications, particularly in the context of a bipolar world. My book, Che Guevara: the economics of revolution, examines the contradictions and challenges faced by the nascent revolutionary government from the perspective of Guevara’s role as president of the National Bank and minister of industries.

Literature on Cuba is dominated by “Cubanology”, an academic school central to the political and ideological opposition to Cuban socialism. Its emergence and links to the US government are well documented. Its arguments are that the revolution changed everything in Cuba – and Fidel (and then Raul) Castro have personally dominated domestic and foreign policy since, denying Cuban democracy and repressing civil society. Thanks to their mismanagement of the economy, growth since 1959 has been negligible. They simply replaced dependency on the US with dependency on the USSR until its collapse in 1990.

These ideas have also shaped political and media discourse on Cuba. But the problem with this analysis is that it obstructs our ability to see clearly what goes on in Cuba or explain the revolution’s endurance and Cuban society’s vitality.

What did Castro inherit?

Arguments about the success or failure of the post-1959 economy often hang on the state of the Cuban economy in the 1950s. The post-1959 government inherited a sugar-dominated economy with the deep socio-economic and racial scars of slavery. Cubanologist Jaime Suchlickiargues that Batista’s Cuba was “well into what Walter Rostow has characterised as the take-off stage”, while Fred Judson points to structural weaknesses in the Cuban economy: “Long-term crises characterised the economy, which had a surface and transient prosperity.” So while one side insists that the revolution interrupted healthy capitalist growth, the other believes it was a precondition to resolving the contradictions obstructing development by ending Cuba’s subjugation to the needs of US capitalism.

Following the revolution, Castro set out to bring social welfare and land reform to the Cuban people and to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of the Cuban elite. But when the defeated Fulgencio Batista and his associates fled Cuba, they stole millions of pesos from the National Bank and the Treasury. The country was decapitalised, severely limiting the capacity for public spending and private investments. Wealthy Cubans were leaving the island, taking their deposits and taxes with them. How was the new government going to carry out the ambitious socio-economic reforms without financial resources?

We have to consider these real circumstances at every juncture. For example, when the US embargo was first implemented, 95% of Cuba’s capital goods and 100% of its spare parts were imported from the US – and the US was overwhelmingly the main recipient of Cuban exports. When the Soviet bloc disintegrated, Cuba lost 85% of its trade and investment, leading GDP to plummet 35%. These events produced serious economic constraints on Cuba’s room for manoeuvre.

Putting a price on poverty

Moving on, we should also ask: how are we to measure Cuba’s poverty? Is it GDP per capita? Is it money-income per day? Should we apply the yardsticks of capitalist economics, focusing on growth and productivity statistics to measure “success” or “failure”, while paying little attention to social and political priorities?

Even factoring in its low GDP per capita, the Human Development Index (HDI) lists Cuba in the “high human development” category; it excels not just in health and education, but also in women’s participation and political inclusion. Cuba has eliminated child malnutrition. No children sleep on the streets. In fact, there is no homelessness. Even during the hungry years of economic crisis of the 1990s, Cubans did not starve. Cuba stuck with the planned economy and it enabled them to ration their scarce resources.

Yes, salaries are extremely low (as both Fidel and Raul have lamented) – but Cubans’ salaries do not determine their standard of living. About 85% of Cubans own their own homes and rent cannot exceed 4% of a tenant’s income. The state provides a (very) basic food basket while utility bills, transport and medicine costs are kept low. The opera, cinema, ballet and so on are cheap for all. High-quality education and healthcare are free. They are part of the material wealth of Cuba and should not be dismissed – as if individual consumption of consumer goods were the only measure of economic success.

Operation miracle

The specific and real challenges Cuban development has faced has generated unique contradictions. In a planned economy, with an extremely tight budget, they have had to prioritise: the infrastructure is crumbling and yet they have first-world human development indicators. Infant mortality rates reveal a lot about the standard of living, being influenced by multiple socioeconomic and medical factors. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is 4.5 per 1,000 live births, which sits it among first-world countries – and above the US on the CIA’s own ranking.

In addition, Cuba provides both free medical treatment and free medical training to thousands of foreigners every year. As a direct initiative of Fidel, in 1999, the Latin American School of Medicine was inaugurated in Havana to provide foreign students from poor countries with six years of training and accommodation completely free. In 2004, Cuba teamed up with Venezuela to provide free eye surgery to people in three dozen countries under Operation Miracle. In the first ten years more than 3m people had their sight restored.

Prohibiting even trade in medicines, the US embargo led Castro to prioritise investments in medical sciences. Cuba now owns around 900 patents and markets pharmaceutical products and vaccines in 40 countries, generating yearly revenues of US$300m, with the potential for massive expansion. The sector produces more than 70% of the medicines consumed by its 11m people. The entire industry is state owned, research programmes respond to the needs of the population, and all surpluses are reinvested into the sector. Without state planning and investment it is unlikely that this could have been achieved in a poor country.

Cuban researchers developed the first synthetic vaccine against a bacteria that causes pneumonia and meningitis.EPA/Alejandro Ernesto

Sharing economy

A great example provided by Cuba is that in its poverty it has known how to share, with all its international programmes. Cuba is the country with the greatest cooperation in relation to its gross domestic product and it is an example for all of us. This doesn’t mean that Cuba doesn’t have big problems, but it is also certain that it is impossible to judge the success or failure of the Cuban model without considering the US blockade, a blockade that has lasted for 50 years. Ecuador wouldn’t survive for five months with that blockade.

Let’s consider the embargo: the Cuban government estimates that it has cost the island US$753.69 billion. Their annual report to the United Nations provides a detailed account of that calculation. That’s a lot for a country whose average GDP between 1970 and 2014 has been calculated at US$31.7 billion.

Yes, Castro presided over mistakes and errors in Cuba’s planned economy. Yes, there is bureaucracy, low productivity, liquidity crisis, debt and numerous other problems – but where aren’t there? Castro pointed to these weaknesses in his own speeches to the Cuban people. But President Correa is right – to objectively judge Castro’s legacy, Cuban development and contemporary reforms today, we cannot pretend that the US blockade – which remains today despite rapprochement – has not shaped the Cuban economy.

Castro almost saw out 11 US presidents since 1959, but he never lived to see the end of the US embargo. New challenges face Cuba, with economic reforms underway and the restoration of relations with the United States. Next week, I will begin new research in Cuba to assess the revolution’s resilience in this post-Castro, Donald Trump era.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Further to my previous post I wrote the following article, which has been published on a number of web sites including in a French translation by Pierre Beaudet.

In Syria the rebel cities that rose up five years ago in revolt against the brutal Assad dictatorship are now under a genocidal siege, bombed and assaulted from the air by Assad’s military aided and abetted by Russian fighter jets and bombers. Their desperate fight for survival, if unsuccessful, will put paid to the Arab Spring and with it the potential for building a democratic, anti-imperialist governmental alternative in the Middle East for an extended period to come. Socialists and antiwar activists everywhere have every interest in supporting the Syrian people and opposing that war.

But where is the antiwar movement? And what if anything is it doing about Syria? The most recent statement on the Canadian Peace Alliance web site is headlined Stop Bombing Syria. But it is focused on NATO. Not wrong in principle, but the statement, addressed to Canada’s previous bombing of ISIS positions in Syria, is many months out of date. There is nothing on the CPA site about the current murderous air and bombing assault on Syria’s cities. And it would appear that across the country the movement is doing nothing to protest the war.

Why the silence? Is it only because Trudeau has pulled Canada’s fighter jets out of Syria; after all, Canadian planes and troops are active in other parts of the Middle East. The CPA denounces the bombing of Syria by Harper and Trudeau but says nothing about the bombing now by Putin.

And most of the left and labour movement are likewise maintaining a disquieting silence on the war in Syria.

Part of the reason lies no doubt in the complex and confused situation on the ground in that country, and throughout the Middle East.

In Syria the Assad regime has from the outset responded with brutal repression, displaying no willingness to negotiate with the democratic and popular opposition forces. It has sought to deflect attention from its war by various tactics, including the release from its prisons of Islamic fundamentalists who are now fighting with Daesh, the reactionary Islamic State forces that have been drawn into Syria from Iraq as a result of the civil war.

Iran and now Russia have intervened in support of Assad, while traditional allies of the United States (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, with the obvious sympathy of Israel), have backed the opposition, although for their own reactionary purposes and without providing the opposition forces with the weapons and other material support they so desperately need.

The United States, no friend of Assad but fearing his overthrow will further destabilize the Middle East and jeopardize Israel’s defense, has doled out aid to the opposition as if through an eye-dropper, denying it the necessary anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons to ward off the regime’s bombing of the dissident cities.

And most recently it is the aerial bombardment of those cities by Russia’s air force that has saved the Assad regime from what at one point appeared to be imminent collapse. Putin is applying in Syria the same tactic he deployed against Grozny and the Chechen revolt in the late 1990s, seeking to annihilate the civilian population as a whole in the opposition cities, and not just their armed defenders.

Yet despite the complexity of the geopolitical situation in Syria, antiwar forces in some countries have mobilized in opposition to the current bombing and in solidarity with the democratic and popular opposition forces in Syria.

For example, in Paris, a number of coalitions apparently initiated by Syrian exiles and other Middle Eastern expatriates have demonstrated recently. I append below the statement by one such coalition.

And in Ottawa recently I chanced upon a group of about 100 demonstrators on Parliament Hill waving Canadian and Syrian flags. Almost all of the demonstrators were Syrian Canadians. The demonstration, I was told by the chief marshal, had been hastily organized within their community to call on the Canadian government to protest the bombing of Aleppo and other cities. The demonstrators’ slogans were clear and straightforward: Stop the bombing! End foreign intervention! Trudeau, speak out against Assad’s murderous assault!

Yet some on the left are unwilling to join in such demonstrations, even if they acknowledge the need for an antiwar movement. For example, a recent article in The Bullet, an on-line publication of the Socialist Project, takes issue in particular with “sections of the international left” that seek to build a movement of support to the anti-Assad opposition and opposition to the brutal military assault on it by the regime and its allies, chiefly Putin’s Russia. They are confusing “the act of building a solidarity movement with the act of building an antiwar movement,” the author David Bush charges.

For socialists in the imperialist countries, he says, “the main enemy is at home.” In Canada, this means focusing the antiwar movement on Canada’s “drive to war” while presumably putting solidarity with the Syrian people and their democratic popular uprising on the back burner. “[P]rioritizing the fight at home,” he explains, means that “In Canada, the focus should be on ensuring the Liberals do not re[-]engage with airstrikes in Syria. It also means demanding the [Canadian] troops be withdrawn from the Middle East and from the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, while also advocating for more refugees to be taken in and stopping Canada’s escalating arms trade.”

In themselves, these are good demands. But isn’t there something missing? What about the bombing, and the actually existing war that is taking place today in Syria? Surely we can’t remain silent on that.

I sense a reluctance on the part of many activists to condemn Russia’s bombings and its alliance with Assad when Russia itself is the target of NATO encirclement and threats of aggression, especially in Eastern Europe. This is understandable. As David Bush notes, political and economic elites in the “West” are waging a campaign to demonize Russia, reflected in hypocritical attacks on some antiwar organizations for not signing on to that campaign. As he says, we must reject the view that Russia is the main enemy on a global scale. Thus it is logical and correct for him to include the demand for Canadian and NATO troop withdrawals from Ukraine and Eastern Europe among the appropriate demands for the antiwar movement of today.

But does that preclude criticism and denunciation of Russia’s bombing and overall counter-revolutionary strategy in Syria? That was the view of one comrade in an on-line discussion I participated in recently. He expressed his discomfiture at criticism of Russia’s conduct in Syria. “Where Russia is concerned,” he said, we should instead aim our fire at the U.S. and NATO.

This seems an evasion to me. It is not the U.S. or NATO which are bombing the hell out of Aleppo and other dissident cities, it is Assad and his Russian ally. To be sure, Putin's commitment to maintaining the Assad regime is in part motivated as a response to threatening moves by the U.S. and NATO in other regions, especially eastern Europe. But do such maneuvers oblige us to maintain silence on Russia's atrocities in Syria? (As it happens, in Syria the U.S. has been attempting of late to collaborate with Russia and the Assad regime in efforts to rout its Islamist fundamentalist opponents. There is no reason to think that a Trump presidency will lessen that orientation.)

I think there is a further reason for the reluctance of many on the left to criticize Russia’s intervention in Syria. We are still adjusting to the changes in the world situation in the wake of the disintegration of the “socialist bloc” and the end of the Cold War that dominated global geopolitics in the latter half of the 20th century. As Phyllis Bennis points out,[1] in reference to the U.S. antiwar movement,

“we seem unable to sort through the complexity of the multi-layered wars raging across Syria, and unable to respond to our internal divisions to create the kind of powerful movement we need to challenge the escalating conflict.

“It was easier during earlier wars. ... Our job was to oppose US military interventions, and to support anti-colonial, anti-imperialist challenges to those wars and interventions.

“In Vietnam, and later during the Central American wars, that meant we all understood that it was the US side that was wrong, that the proxy armies and militias Washington supported were wrong, and that we wanted US troops and warplanes and Special Forces out. In all those wars, within the core of our movement, many of us not only wanted US troops out but we supported the social program of the other side—we wanted the Vietnamese, led by the North Vietnamese government and the National Liberation Front in the South, to win. In Nicaragua and El Salvador, we wanted US troops and advisers out and also victory for, respectively, the Sandinistas and the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). In South Africa we wanted an end to US support for apartheid and we also wanted the African National Congress to win.

“The solidarity part got much harder in Afghanistan and especially in the Iraq wars. We stood in solidarity with ordinary Afghans and Iraqis suffering through US sanctions and wars, and some of our organizations built powerful ties with counterparts, such as US Labor Against the War’s links with the Iraqi oil workers union. And we recognized the right under international law for an invaded and occupied people to resist. But as to the various militias actually fighting against the United States, there were none we affirmatively supported, no political-military force whose social program we wanted to see victorious. So it was more complicated. Some things remained clear, however—the US war was still wrong and illegal, we still recognized the role of racism and imperialism in those wars, we still demanded that US troops get out.

Now, in Syria, even that is uncertain....”

The left is divided. Some support Bashar al-Assad. “A larger cohort wants to ‘win’ the war for the Syrian revolution, the description they give to the post–Arab Spring efforts by Syrian activists to continue protesting the regime’s repression and working for a more democratic future.”[2]

As to those who see Syria as leading an “arc of resistance” in the Middle East, Bennis makes a telling point: this is

“a claim long debunked by the actual history of the Assad family’s rule. From its 1976 enabling of a murderous attack on the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zataar in Beirut by right-wing Lebanese backed by Israel, to sending warplanes to join the US coalition bombing Iraq in 1991, to guaranteeing Israel a largely quiet border and quiescent population in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, to its role in interrogating and torturing outsourced US detainees in the “global war on terror,” Syria has never been a consistent anti-imperialist or resistance center.”

The fact is, today’s world differs substantially from that of the Vietnam war. In the 1960s, a military, political and economic bloc led by a dominant imperialist power, the United States, confronted a bloc of states that in one way or another had been torn from the circuits of capital accumulation under Wall Street’s aegis and constituted a vital source of support and even survival for “Third World” liberation movements, as in the case of the Cuban revolution. Today, in the wake of the collapse of the ostensibly “socialist” bloc, we need to pay more attention to the shape of the world that is emerging on a global scale. In a context of declining U.S. hegemony and the emergence of new and nuclear-armed capitalist powers like China and Russia, we must assess what that means for the anti-imperialist fighters of today.

I think it is wrong to approach Syria as just another front in some “new Cold War” between Russia and the U.S. and NATO. Each situation must be assessed in terms of the class forces involved, not some abstract geopolitics that overlooks the interplay of contending imperial interests. In the post-Cold War world, a new era of national and inter-imperialist competition and rivalry, socialists undermine their own credibility if they limit their “anti-imperialism” to denouncing only their “own” imperialism. As Gilbert Achcar argues in the article I cite in note 2, our starting point in this case must be the interests of the Arab revolution, the Arab Spring, and the popular uprising that in Syria erupted almost half a decade ago.

In analyzing these issues, we can draw on the best traditions of the early socialist movement, in particular the internationalist stance taken during the First World War by the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement in Europe: in each of the warring imperialist countries, the socialists had to prioritize opposition to the aggression of their “own” governments and ruling classes, but this antiwar opposition was also an act of supreme solidarity with the antiwar opposition in the opposing “enemy” countries. This approach was exemplified in the Zimmerwald Manifesto, adopted in 1915 at a conference of European socialists. The manifesto was a powerful appeal for “a peace without annexations or war indemnities.” The right of self-determination of peoples, it said, “must be the indestructible principle in the system of national relationships of peoples.”

Some of the Manifesto’s signatories were critical of the Manifesto, however, for failing to link the struggle against war with the struggle for socialism. Lenin, in particular, was insistent that “a revolutionary struggle for socialism is the only way to put an end to the horror of war.” In a pamphlet he drafted on behalf of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, immediately prior to the Zimmerwald conference, Lenin explained that “our attitude towards war is fundamentally different from that of the bourgeois pacifists (supporters and advocates of peace) and of the Anarchists” who were a major influence in the workers movement in many European countries at that time.[3] His thesis is summarized at the very outset of the first chapter:[4]

We differ from the former in that we understand the inevitable connection between wars and the class struggle within a country; we understand that wars cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and socialism is created; we also differ in that we regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by an oppressed class against the oppressor class, by slaves against slaveholders, by serfs against landowners, and by wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as fully legitimate, progressive and necessary. We Marxists differ from both pacifists and anarchists in that we deem it necessary to study each war historically (from the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism) and separately. [Emphasis added]

These key propositions were in substance adopted in the program of the Communist International in Lenin’s day. See, for example, the Theses on the National and Colonial Question adopted at the Second Congress in 1920. And they served as useful guidelines in assessing the Second World War, a complex combination of five different conflicts: as Ernest Mandel summarized them, (1) an inter-imperialist war fought for world hegemony and won by the United States; (2) a just war of self-defence by the Soviet Union against an imperialist attempt to colonize the country and destroy the achievements of the 1917 Revolution; (3) a just war of the Chinese people against imperialism which would develop into a socialist revolution; (4) a just war of the Asian colonial peoples against the various military powers and for national liberation and sovereignty, which in some cases (e.g. Indochina) spilled over into socialist revolution; and (5) a just war of national liberation fought by populations of the occupied countries of Europe, which would grow into socialist revolution (Yugoslavia and Albania) or open civil war (Greece, North Italy).[5]

In my view, this approach is relevant to the present situation in Syria: and in particular, the progressive nature of the Syrian masses’ “civil war” directed against their oppression and repression by the Assad regime and by necessary implication the global imperialist system of which it is a component. This struggle is in essence a class struggle, and its success (and the success of the other democratic uprisings in the Arab Spring) is a precondition to the development and ultimate success of the fight for a socialist Arab East.

The challenge posed to us by the global configuration of forces is huge, there is no denying it. But where peoples are fighting their oppression and imperialist intervention, there is no dichotomy between antiwar resistance and solidarity with the forces on the ground. Nor should our solidarity be determined by whether or to what degree the Canadian state is directly involved.

Yes, in Canada we must direct our fire against the Trudeau government’s aggressive moves against Russia and its present and projected military engagements elsewhere, as in Africa.

But we should have no hesitation in attempting to mobilize solidarity with the Syrian democratic and popular opposition — for an end to the war: for an end to the bombing, withdrawal of all foreign troops (in this case mainly Russian), and emergency provision of massive food, medical and other necessary supplies to the population in the besieged cities.

Appendix

The following statement was issued by the Collectif Avec la Révolution Syrienne in advance of a demonstration in Paris November 5 to protest the Assad regime’s siege, supported by Russian fighter jets and bombers, of urban areas in Syria inhabited by civilian opponents of the regime. The full list of members of the collective, which includes about eight organizations including the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, available here. My translation.

Statement by French coalition against the bombing of Syria’s rebel cities

The following statement was issued by the Collectif Avec la Révolution Syrienne [Collective in support of the Syrian Revolution – ARS] in advance of a demonstration in Paris November 5 to protest the Assad regime’s siege, supported by Russian fighter jets and bombers, of urban areas in Syria inhabited by civilian opponents of the regime. The full list of members of the collective, which includes about eight organizations including the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, appears in the French text of the statement, available here. My translation.

* * *

On October 20, 2016, after a month of mass killings organized by the air forces of Assad and Putin, the population of Aleppo, taking advantage of a truce lasting a few days, came into the streets again. And as they have said since the beginning of the revolution, in 2011, they chanted “the people want the fall of the regime.”

Despite weeks of bombardment, they refused again to leave the besieged city and denounced the population replacement policy orchestrated by Assad in some regions (as in Darayya, or Moaddamya recently).

Against and despite it all, the civilian and armed resistance continues to fight both the Assad regime and Daesh.

After discussing for more than a year with Putin, whose army is massacring civilians in the liberated zones, many diplomats turned up the volume, especially in the United Nations, when Putin and Assad stepped up the massacres in Aleppo.

While the Aleppo bombing is (provisionally?) less intensive now, the bombing of civilian populations in many regions continues.

Furthermore, Eastern Aleppo, like other regions, is still under siege, and more than 251,000 political prisoners are still being mistreated (and often tortured to death).

There are many eyes riveted now on Mosul, Iraq, and on Raqqa, Syria, controlled by Daesh. The international coalition (including France) is intervening there with the proclaimed objective of “eradicating” Daesh. But eradicating Daesh while letting the butcher Assad quietly continue to annihilate the Syrian people; need we recall that more than 90% of the dead civilians in Syria were killed by Assad and not Daesh? Daesh developed with Assad’s complicity and because of the international abandonment of the Syrian people whom Assad has been massacring for five years, amidst the indifference of many.

The best way to put an end to Daesh and the Assad regime is not through foreign intervention but by supporting the people of Syria in their struggle against these two scourges. A people who have demonstrated their great capacity to self-organize.

But the governments of the regional and international powers are above all unwilling to support a people who demand the right to their self-determination, that is, to decide their future themselves without being massacred, whether it be by a Syrian dictator or by the Russian, Iranian, Iraqi armed forces, or by Hezbollah.

So it is necessary to continue demanding an end to all the bombing of the Syrian populations — by the regime and its Russian and Iranian allies, first, but also by the coalition led by the United States in which France is participating, which provide Russia with an argument to justify its own bombing and which reinforces the jihadist propaganda.

While the major global powers try to impose, via the UN in particular, their view of how the conflict in Syria should be resolved, only the popular and democratic forces are able to bring about a peaceful political solution to the present tragic situation.

From this standpoint, we must support the convergence among all the democratic forces, especially Arabs and Kurds, fighting against the powers that oppress them in Syria and in the other countries of the region.

It is up to the Syrian people to determine their own future and to define the forms of support that seem necessary to them, support that the supposed “friends of Syria” have completely perverted. We must open our borders and welcome in decent conditions the populations that are fleeing the war.

The organizations in the collective With the Syrian Revolution and the Declaration of Damascus for a democratic change, in their diversity and with their own analyses, support the following common basis:

For an immediate halt to all bombing in Syria!

For an immediate end to all the sieges, and immediate freeing of all the political prisoners!

For the departure from Syria of all foreign armed forces!

The demand of the Syrian people for the departure of Assad and the end of his regime, immediately and unconditionally, is legitimate. It will help to shorten the suffering of the population, allow the return of the refugees to their country and build a free and democratic Syria.

Solidarity with the people in struggle against the barbarism of Assad and his allies, against the barbarism of Daesh, for a democratic alternative. It is for the Syrian people and they alone to determine their future and whatever support they think they need, including weapons to defend themselves against the death raining down on them from the skies.

For an international mobilization calling for humanitarian aid and a welcome for the refugees!

[1] Bennis is director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project and is the author of Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer.

[2] See in particular a valuable article by Gilbert Achcar, “Middle East: Standing Against Barbarism,” Jacobin, October 20, 2016. In this regard, I do not endorse Bennis’s distinction, in her article cited above, between the “heroic activists who first challenged Damascus in nonviolent protests in 2011 and who continue to try to survive and build civil society amid war and terror,” whom she supports, and “the militias doing the actual fighting” in desperate defense of their besieged cities, whom she opposes.

Friday, November 11, 2016

In a recent article, “Syria and the Antiwar Tradition,” published in the Socialist Project’s on-line bulletin The Bullet, David Bush discusses various positions taken by international left currents on issues raised by the current war in Syria and asks what, if anything, socialists can or should do about it.

Bush advances many arguments, and I agree with much of what he writes. But since I had expressed a somewhat different approach in a members-only email discussion list of Socialist Project, the Bullet editors asked if I would like to comment on the article for publication. Pursuant to that invitation, I submitted a response to Bush’s article to the editors on November 5. Since it has not yet been published I reproduce it below, as submitted together with a list of suggested readings and a short article by Gilbert Achcar that I considered apposite.

As well, I use this opportunity to add some additional comments following that article on an aspect of the debate that I alluded to only briefly in my original text.

* * *

Solidarity with the people of Syria! Build the antiwar movement!

By Richard Fidler

David Bush’s article “Syria and the Antiwar Tradition,” in the November 3 issue of The Bullet, is a commendable attempt to debate what antiwar activists in Canada and other “Western” countries should be saying and doing about the current war in Syria.

In that country, the rebel cities that rose up four years ago in revolt against the brutal Assad dictatorship are now under a genocidal siege, bombed and assaulted from the air by Assad’s military aided and abetted by Russian fighter jets and bombers. Their desperate fight for survival, if unsuccessful, will put paid to the Arab Spring and with it the potential for building a democratic, anti-imperialist governmental alternative in the Middle East for an extended period to come. Socialists everywhere have every interest in supporting the Syrian people and opposing that war.[1]

David Bush correctly calls for building a broad antiwar movement in this country and he cites as precedents the powerful movements against the Vietnam war in the 1960s and ’70s and the Iraq war in 2003. Oddly, however, in discussing how the antiwar movement should address the war in Syria, he wants to impose limits on the political message and alignments of the movement that in my view would contradict the goal of building a united front of opposition to the war. In doing so, he — unwittingly — reveals one of the major reasons why such a movement is lacking.

David takes issue in particular with “sections of the international left” that seek to build a movement of support to the anti-Assad opposition and opposition to the brutal military assault on it by the regime and its allies, chiefly Putin’s Russia. They are framing the complex situation in Syria “in ways that are completely off the mark in terms of guiding an appropriate response at home,” he charges.

For socialists in the imperialist countries, he says, “the main enemy is at home.” In Canada, this means focusing the antiwar movement on Canada’s “drive to war” while presumably putting solidarity with the Syrian people and their democratic popular uprising on the back burner. He criticizes some left opponents of the war for confusing “the act of building a solidarity movement with the act of building an antiwar movement.” Solidarity, he says, involves “bringing awareness and material support to a group of people,” while an antiwar movement is directed to “stopping your own government’s drive to war.”

“Speaking out on crimes perpetrated elsewhere is important but prioritizing the fight at home is key....”

I fail to see this distinction between building solidarity and building an antiwar movement. The revolutionary socialist movement has historically not made such a distinction: building mass antiwar movements is precisely the clearest and most direct way to express solidarity with the victims of imperialist war and the democratic and revolutionary forces on a global scale.

“[P]rioritizing the fight at home,” David explains, means that “In Canada, the focus should be on ensuring the Liberals do not re[-]engage with airstrikes in Syria. It also means demanding the [Canadian] troops be withdrawn from the Middle East and from the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, while also advocating for more refugees to be taken in and stopping Canada’s escalating arms trade.”

In themselves, these are good demands. But isn’t there something missing? What about the bombing, and the actually existing war that is taking place today in Syria? Surely we can’t remain silent on that.

For example, in France an antiwar committee called a demonstration for October 29 in Paris around a number of demands that speak to the self-determination of the Syrian people. Among them: Immediate end to the bombing of Aleppo and in the rest of Syria; departure from Syria of all foreign militias and occupation armies; international prosecution of war criminals; French government assurance of protection, in accordance with international law, of the Syrian people, prevented up to now from having the necessary means to defend themselves against the air bombing of schools, hospitals, markets and homes; immediate and unconditional access to the besieged and starving populations, in coordination with the democratically elected local councils; and immediate freeing of all political prisoners in Syria.

These demands, or some variation of them, should resonate with many people, not least the Syrian exile community whose ranks are now swelled by millions as a result of Assad’s brutal repression. In Ottawa recently, I chanced upon a group of about 100 demonstrators on Parliament Hill waving Canadian and Syrian flags. Almost all of the demonstrators were Syrian Canadians. The demonstration, I was told by the chief marshal, had been hastily organized within their community to call on the Canadian government to protest the bombing of Aleppo and other cities. The demonstrators’ slogans were clear and straightforward: Stop the bombing! End foreign intervention! Trudeau, speak out against Assad’s murderous assault!

But where was the traditional antiwar movement? And what if anything is it doing about Syria? The most recent statement on the Canadian Peace Alliance web site is headlined Stop Bombing Syria. But it is focused on NATO. Not wrong in principle, but the statement, addressed to Canada’s previous bombing of ISIS positions in Syria, is many months out of date. There is nothing on the CPA site about the current murderous air and bombing assault on Syria’s cities. And it would appear that across the country the movement is doing nothing to protest the war.

Why the silence? Is it only because Trudeau has pulled Canada’s fighter jets out of Syria; after all, Canadian planes and troops are active in other parts of the Middle East. The CPA denounces the bombing of Syria by Harper and Trudeau but says nothing about the bombing now by Putin.

In my view, the failure of the antiwar movement in Canada — and elsewhere — to address the situation in Syria is a reaction in part not only to the admittedly complex nature of the military and political alignments involved but in particular to a shift in global geopolitics that the anti-imperialist and antiwar activists are having difficulty assimilating and incorporating in their strategy. (For explanations of those alignments see the suggested readings listed at the end of this article.)

To put it bluntly, I sense a reluctance on the part of many activists to condemn the Russian bombing and its alliance with Assad when Russia itself is the target of NATO encirclement and threats of aggression, especially in Eastern Europe. This is understandable. As David Bush notes, political and economic elites in the “West” are waging a campaign to demonize Russia, reflected in hypocritical attacks on some antiwar organizations for not signing on to that campaign. As David says, we must reject the view that Russia is the main enemy on a global scale. Thus it is logical and correct for him to include the demand for Canadian and NATO troop withdrawals from Ukraine and Eastern Europe among the appropriate demands for the antiwar movement of today.

But does that preclude criticism and denunciation of Russia’s bombing and overall counter-revolutionary strategy in Syria? That was the view of one comrade in an email discussion I participated in recently. He expressed his discomfiture at criticism of Russia’s conduct in Syria. “Where Russia is concerned,” he said, we should instead aim our fire at the U.S. and NATO.

This seems an evasion to me. It is not the U.S. or NATO which are bombing the hell out of Aleppo and other dissident cities, it is Assad and his Russian ally. To be sure, Putin's commitment to maintaining the Assad regime is in part motivated as a response to threatening moves by the U.S. and NATO in other regions, especially eastern Europe. But do such maneuvers oblige us to maintain silence on Russia's atrocities in Syria? (As it happens, in Syria the U.S. has been attempting to collaborate with Russia and the Assad regime in efforts to rout its Islamist fundamentalist opponents.)

It is no accident that David turns to the pre-World War I debates among socialists for historical precedents for today’s antiwar movement. Our world today is much more like the world in the early 20th century, one of contending imperialist powers of uneven strength and influence, than to the Cold War confrontation of East and West blocs that shaped global politics in the latter half of the century.

David draws attention to the linkage between war and imperialism that the early socialists made. As he notes, however, their fine resolutions were ignored when the war broke out: “most sections of the [Socialist] International sided with their own ruling class.” The “correct orientation of each national group,” he says, “was to oppose its own ruling class’s drive to war.” The main enemy is at home.

I agree, but would add that this stance did not mean that socialists in one imperialist country would turn a blind eye to the crimes of other imperialist powers in their mutual rivalry for plunder of resources, new markets and colonies. Socialist internationalism was the corollary of consistent solidarity with all the peoples and nations subject to imperialist exploitation and aggression. That is the essence of the resolutions of the Second International and the Zimmerwald Left cited by David.

This points us to the need for political clarity in the united front of antiwar opposition David proposes we build. He cites the precedents of the mass movements that were built in opposition to the Vietnam war in the 1960s and ’70s and the global mobilizations against the impending Iraq invasion in 2003. In both cases, as he notes, the “terms of the movement were simple: do you oppose the war? If yes, then let’s join forces on that question and debate other political perspectives along the way.”

“What has been lost in the debate around the war in Syria is precisely this perspective,” he says.

Actually, in the case of the Vietnam war, it was not quite that simple. A fierce debate was waged in the movement, especially in the United States, over the slogans that would build the broadest front of opposition to the war and solidarity with the revolution. In the beginning many antiwar activists wanted to focus the movement on the demand for negotiations to end the war in the hope of finding common ground with bourgeois politicians by conceding some legitimate interest to Washington, some interest it could defend in negotiations with the Vietnamese revolutionaries. Those in the militant wing of the movement, on the other hand, argued for the simple demand “Out Now!,” which was consistent with the democratic right of the Vietnamese people to self-determination and thus an expression of the fullest solidarity.

Over time, with mounting antiwar sentiment among the public and the U.S. troops, spurred by the military victories of the Vietnamese fighters themselves, Out Now became the dominant slogan, and around that demand a mighty movement was built that eventually did force Nixon to the bargaining table, where Washington was obliged to make concessions that contributed to the ultimate victory of the Vietnamese revolution. (In Canada, we also raised the demand for an end to Canada's complicity with Washington's war.)

The point is that opposition to a war may not by itself be sufficient as the basis for building an effective antiwar united front. The central demands must be principled and point to the clearest and most effective way to end the imperialist intervention and advance the interests of those fighting it on the ground. Thus I would question David’s assertion that in the case of Syria a united front of antiwar opposition should include “all those who advocate for ending the involvement of your own ruling classes.” Would that include supporters of Assad? Of the Russians, or of the other forces allied with them? David rightly rejects such alliances elsewhere in his article. I would think the central political message should include the demand for an immediate end to the bombing and the assault on the civilian population, coupled with other demands that express material solidarity with the Syrians, not their government — along the lines of the slogans raised in the Paris and Ottawa demonstrations I noted above.

In the case of both Vietnam and Iraq, the war was the project of the hegemonic imperialist power, the United States, albeit in alliances with lesser imperialist powers. And in Vietnam, the other protagonists were North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front: strong forces united around a common project of national liberation, re-unification of their country, and a break from imperialist domination.

In the Middle East today this scenario does not apply in the same way. In fact, the lack of a united anti-imperialist, anti-Hussein movement in Iraq was the primary explanation for the failure of the resistance. And disappointment over the failure of the global antiwar protests in early 2003, immense as they were, to impede the Pentagon assault on Iraq is a major factor in the passivity of the international antiwar movement today. The more recent Arab Spring, inspiring as it was, could not compensate, as it took the form of largely spontaneous uprisings that, even where victorious, did not produce major democratic or popular conquests and in Egypt were soon succeeded by a regime even more repressive than Mubarak’s.

But there is a further factor as well. Today’s world differs substantially from that of the Vietnam war. In the 1960s, a military, political and economic bloc led by a dominant imperialist power, the United States, confronted a bloc of states that in one way or another had been torn from the circuits of capital accumulation under Wall Street’s aegis and constituted a vital source of support and even survival for “Third World” liberation movements, as in the case of the Cuban revolution. Today, in the wake of the collapse of the ostensibly “socialist” bloc, we need to pay more attention to the shape of the world that is emerging on a global scale. In a context of declining U.S. hegemony and the emergence of new and nuclear-armed capitalist powers like China and Russia, we must assess what that means for the anti-imperialist fighters of today.

I think it is wrong to approach Syria as just another front in some “new Cold War” between Russia and the U.S. and NATO. Each situation must be assessed in terms of the class forces involved, not some abstract geopolitics that overlooks the interplay of contending imperial interests. In the post-Cold War world, a new era of national and inter-imperialist competition and rivalry, socialists undermine their own credibility if they limit their “anti-imperialism” to denouncing only their “own” imperialism. As Gilbert Achcar argues in a valuable article I have appended below, our starting point in this case must be the interests of the Arab revolution, the Arab Spring, and the popular uprising that in Syria erupted almost half a decade ago.

The challenge posed to the antiwar movement by the global configuration of forces is huge, there is no denying it. But where peoples are fighting their oppression and imperialist intervention, there is no dichotomy between antiwar resistance and solidarity with the forces on the ground. Nor should our solidarity be determined by whether or to what degree the Canadian state is directly involved.

Yes, in Canada we must direct our fire against the Trudeau government’s aggressive moves against Russia and its present and projected military engagements elsewhere, as in Africa.

But a consistent antiwar movement should also have no hestitation in attempting to mobilize solidarity with the Syrian democratic and popular opposition — for an end to the war: for an end to the bombing, withdrawal of all foreign troops (in this case mainly Russian), and emergency provision of massive food, medical and other necessary supplies to the population in the besieged cities.

Both the Syrian regime and the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen aim to bury the aspirations of the Arab Spring.

The Arab political opinion falls into two main categories: those who condemn the murderous and destructive bombing of Syrian cities and rural areas by the Syrian regime and its Russian master and keep silent about the murderous and destructive bombing of Yemeni cities and rural areas by the Saudi-led coalition, when they don’t support the latter; and those who condemn the murderous and destructive bombing of Yemeni cities and rural areas by the Saudi-led coalition and keep silent about the murderous and destructive bombing of Syrian cities and rural areas by the Syrian regime and its Russian master, when they don’t support the latter.

We hardly hear the voice of the third category, those who condemn both bombings and regard them as equally criminal (even though there is no denying that the bombing by the Syrian regime and its Russian master has caused much more killing and much greater destruction than the other). And yet this third category exists and it is certainly larger and more widespread than what its silence would lead one to believe.

It is the category of those who put the interests and safety of populations above all political considerations and reject the deplorable logic according to which “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” regardless of the nature of this “friend,” the values that he represents and the goals that he pursues. The truth is, indeed, that the counterrevolutionary forces that mobilized against the great Arab uprising of 2011, known as the Arab Spring, are of various sorts and forms.

Both the Syrian regime and the Saudi one are key pillars of the old rotten Arab regime against which the uprising stood up, with the dream of being able to sweep it away and replace it with an order that would provide “bread, freedom, social justice, and national dignity” — the slogan that was chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and numerous other squares providing the best summary of the aspirations of the Arab Spring. The purpose of both bombings — that perpetrated by the Syrian regime and its Russian master and that perpetrated by the Saudi regime and its allies — is one in essence: they both aim at burying the revolutionary process ignited in Tunisia on December 17, six years ago.

The role of the Syrian regime and its Iranian (with auxiliaries) and Russian allies in confronting the Syrian revolution and repressing it with the ugliest and vilest means at the cost of untold massacre and destruction, is as clear as could be — except in the eyes of those who don’t want to see and persist in denying the reality or strive to justify it in presenting the uprising as a foreign conspiracy, thus repeating the worn-out argument of all reactionary regimes confronted with uprisings and revolutions.

As for the role of the Saudi regime in heading the Arab reaction, it is attested by the kingdom’s entire history, especially since the winds of liberation from colonialism and imperialism started blowing over the Arab region. Since 2011, this role took different forms from direct repressive intervention as occurred in Bahrain to support to the old regime by various means as occurred in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as provision of assistance and funding to Salafist groups in Syria in order to drown the uprising in a religious sectarian ideology that suits the kingdom and thus to ward off the democratic threat that the Syrian revolution represented for Arab despotism in all its variants, and not for the Syrian Baathist regime alone.

In Yemen, the neighboring country where events are the object of its greatest concern, the Saudi kingdom intervened to foster a compromise between the very reactionary Ali Abdallah Saleh and an opposition dominated by reactionary forces. This shoddy agreement was doomed to be short-lived: it collapsed and with it collapsed the Yemeni state, leading the country in its turn into the inferno of war.

The Yemeni war is not one between a revolutionary camp and a counterrevolutionary one, but one between two camps antithetic to the fundamental aspirations for which Yemen’s youth rose up in 2011. The Saudi-led intervention is supporting one side in a war between two reactionary camps and for considerations that are exclusively related to the kingdom’s security. Its main tool fits well its reactionary nature: the aerial bombing of populated areas with indifference for the murder of civilians, identical in that respect to the Russian bombing in Syria, not to mention the Syrian regime’s deliberate murder of civilians.

That is why it is indispensable that all those who are loyal to the hopes created by the Arab uprising and keen on reviving the revolutionary process that it unleashed and that was faced with severe reactionary relapse two years after it started, it is indispensable that all of them stick to a consistent attitude in condemning the reactionary onslaught that is falling from the sky, whichever its source is.

This is one aspect of what it takes to build in the Arab region a progressive pole independent of all the poles and axes of the old Arab regime and its reactionary contenders — the indispensable condition if the Arab revolution is to arise again and resume the march that it began six years ago, short of which there is no hope of overcoming the catastrophic situation into which the region has degenerated.

Gilbert Achcar is professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism and The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising.

Both David Bush and I agree that an antiwar movement today, as always, must be anti-imperialist in its orientation. We both oppose the aggressive foreign policy of successive Canadian governments, including Canada’s membership in NATO and its recent participation in the NATO encirclement strategy aimed at Russia. We both draw on the best traditions of the early socialist movement, in particular the internationalist stance taken during the First World War by the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement in Europe: in each of the warring imperialist countries, the socialists had to prioritize opposition to the aggression of their “own” governments and ruling classes; this antiwar opposition, I would add, was an act of supreme solidarity with the antiwar opposition in the opposing “enemy” countries. And we both cited the Zimmerwald Manifesto, adopted by antiwar socialists during that war. However, in the context of Syria today, there is more to be said in this regard.

The Zimmerwald Manifesto, adopted in 1915 at a conference of European socialists, was a powerful appeal for “a peace without annexations or war indemnities.” The right of self-determination of peoples, it said, “must be the indestructible principle in the system of national relationships of peoples.”[2]

Some of the Manifesto’s signatories were critical of the Manifesto, however, for failing to link the struggle against war with the struggle for socialism. Lenin, in particular, was insistent that “a revolutionary struggle for socialism is the only way to put an end to the horror of war.”[3] In a pamphlet he drafted on behalf of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, immediately prior to the Zimmerwald conference, Lenin explained that “our attitude towards war is fundamentally different from that of the bourgeois pacifists (supporters and advocates of peace) and of the Anarchists” who were a major influence in the workers movement in many European countries at that time.[4] His thesis is summarized at the very outset of the first chapter:[5]

We differ from the former in that we understand the inevitable connection between wars and the class struggle within a country; we understand that wars cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and socialism is created; we also differ in that we regard civil wars, i.e., wars waged by an oppressed class against the oppressor class, by slaves against slaveholders, by serfs against landowners, and by wage-workers against the bourgeoisie, as fully legitimate, progressive and necessary. We Marxists differ from both pacifists and anarchists in that we deem it necessary to study each war historically (from the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism) and separately. [Emphasis added]

These key propositions were in substance adopted in the program of the Communist International in Lenin’s day. See, for example, the Theses on the National and Colonial Question adopted at the Second Congress in 1920.[6] And they served as useful guidelines in assessing the Second World War, a complex combination of five different conflicts: as Ernest Mandel summarized them, (1) an inter-imperialist war fought for world hegemony and won by the United States; (2) a just war of self-defence by the Soviet Union against an imperialist attempt to colonize the country and destroy the achievements of the 1917 Revolution; (3) a just war of the Chinese people against imperialism which would develop into a socialist revolution; (4) a just war of the Asian colonial peoples against the various military powers and for national liberation and sovereignty, which in some cases (e.g. Indochina) spilled over into socialist revolution; and (5) a just war of national liberation fought by populations of the occupied countries of Europe, which would grow into socialist revolution (Yugoslavia and Albania) or open civil war (Greece, North Italy).[7]

In my view, this approach is relevant to the present situation in Syria: and in particular, the progressive nature of the Syrian masses’ “civil war” directed against their oppression and repression by the Assad regime and by necessary implication the global imperialist system of which it is a component. This struggle is in essence a class struggle, and its success (and the success of the other democratic uprisings in the Arab Spring) is a precondition to the development and ultimate success of the fight for a socialist Arab East. Socialists should have no hesitation in supporting that struggle and opposing all imperialist intervention aimed at suppressing it.

– Richard Fidler

Appendix:

In my text for The Bullet, above, I mentioned the demands of a coalition sponsoring a Paris demonstration in defense of Aleppo. Since then, a statement by another coalition participating in that demonstration has come to my attention. Since it is even clearer in its anti-imperialist thrust, it is worth republication here.

Statement by French coalition against the bombing of Syria’s rebel cities

The following statement was issued by the Collectif Avec la Révolution Syrienne [Collective in support of the Syrian Revolution – ARS] in advance of a demonstration in Paris November 5 to protest the Assad regime’s siege, supported by Russian fighter jets and bombers, of urban areas in Syria inhabited by civilian opponents of the regime. The full list of members of the collective, which includes about eight organizations including the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, appears in the French text of the statement, available here. My translation.[8]

* * *

On October 20, 2016, after a month of mass killings organized by the air forces of Assad and Putin, the population of Aleppo, taking advantage of a truce lasting a few days, came into the streets again. And as they have said since the beginning of the revolution, in 2011, they chanted “the people want the fall of the regime.”

Despite weeks of bombardment, they refused again to leave the besieged city and denounced the population replacement policy orchestrated by Assad in some regions (as in Darayya, or Moaddamya recently).

Against and despite it all, the civilian and armed resistance continues to fight both the Assad regime and Daesh.

After discussing for more than a year with Putin, whose army is massacring civilians in the liberated zones, many diplomats turned up the volume, especially in the United Nations, when Putin and Assad stepped up the massacres in Aleppo.

While the Aleppo bombing is (provisionally?) less intensive now, the bombing of civilian populations in many regions continues.

Furthermore, Eastern Aleppo, like other regions, is still under siege, and more than 251,000 political prisoners are still being mistreated (and often tortured to death).

There are many eyes riveted now on Mosul, Iraq, and on Raqqa, Syria, controlled by Daesh. The international coalition (including France) is intervening there with the proclaimed objective of “eradicating” Daesh. But eradicating Daesh while letting the butcher Assad quietly continue to annihilate the Syrian people; need we recall that more than 90% of the dead civilians in Syria were killed by Assad and not Daesh? Daesh developed with Assad’s complicity and because of the international abandonment of the Syrian people whom Assad has been massacring for five years, amidst the indifference of many.

The best way to put an end to Daesh and the Assad regime is not through foreign intervention but by supporting the people of Syria in their struggle against these two scourges. A people who have demonstrated their great capacity to self-organize.

But the governments of the regional and international powers are above all unwilling to support a people who demand the right to their self-determination, that is, to decide their future themselves without being massacred, whether it be by a Syrian dictator or by the Russian, Iranian, Iraqi armed forces, or by Hezbollah.

So it is necessary to continue demanding an end to all the bombing of the Syrian populations — by the regime and its Russian and Iranian allies, first, but also by the coalition led by the United States in which France is participating, which provide Russia with an argument to justify its own bombing and which reinforces the jihadist propaganda.

While the major global powers try to impose, via the UN in particular, their view of how the conflict in Syria should be resolved, only the popular and democratic forces are able to bring about a peaceful political solution to the present tragic situation.

From this standpoint, we must support the convergence among all the democratic forces, especially Arabs and Kurds, fighting against the powers that oppress them in Syria and in the other countries of the region.

It is up to the Syrian people to determine their own future and to define the forms of support that seem necessary to them, support that the supposed “friends of Syria” have completely perverted. We must open our borders and welcome in decent conditions the populations that are fleeing the war.

__________________________________

The organizations in the collective With the Syrian Revolution and the Declaration of Damascus for a democratic change, in their diversity and with their own analyses, support the following common basis:

For an immediate halt to all bombing in Syria!

For an immediate end to all the sieges, and immediate freeing of all the political prisoners!

For the departure from Syria of all foreign armed forces!

The demand of the Syrian people for the departure of Assad and the end of his regime, immediately and unconditionally, is legitimate. It will help to shorten the suffering of the population, allow the return of the refugees to their country and build a free and democratic Syria.

Solidarity with the people in struggle against the barbarism of Assad and his allies, against the barbarism of Daesh, for a democratic alternative. It is for the Syrian people and they alone to determine their future and whatever support they think they need, including weapons to defend themselves against the death raining down on them from the skies.

For an international mobilization calling for humanitarian aid and a welcome for the refugees!